Interview: Turkey in turmoil: authoritarianism, resistance and a new peace process

Turkish politics have been in turmoil recently. Earlier this year, there were mass street protests against the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Then came the announcement that the country’s main Kurdish militant group would lay down its arms. Şenol Karakaş from the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party in Turkey answered questions compiled by Arthur Townend and Joseph Choonara on behalf of International Socialism about the developing situation.

ISJ: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have dominated Turkish politics for over 20 years. Erdoğan first became prime minister in 2003. However, earlier this year, we witnessed a large mass protest movement against the government. To what extent are we seeing a significant challenge to Erdoğan’s rule?
Şenol: The protests that began on 19 March 2025 were the largest mass movement the AKP has faced. The arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, who won the Istanbul mayoral election three times with millions of votes, and of more than a hundred municipal officials, sparked an outburst of anger among many segments of the population, not just supporters of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP).1 İmamoğlu is Erdoğan’s biggest rival in the upcoming presidential election, with polls showing that Erdoğan would lose against him. Before the arrests, İmamoğlu and the CHP had begun preparations for the election campaign. A primary election was to be held on 23 March, in which CHP members would decide on the party’s presidential candidate. The wave of arrests came right at this moment.

While the police was arresting the mayor, the Istanbul Governor’s Office declared a ban on protests, but this ban was ignored. Large protests took place in front of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality building and quickly spread to other provinces. The movement that began in response to İmamoğlu’s arrest turned into a general outburst of anger. These protests shattered the wall of fear created by the state of emergency regime that followed the coup attempt on 15 July 2016.2 The AKP’s judicial attack to usurp democracy was met with a street movement of millions.

We have named the actions of 19-29 March the “ten days that shook Turkey”. During these ten days, more than 1.5 million people came out to protest in Istanbul alone, gathering in front of the municipal building in Saraçhane; university students, followed by high school students, took to the streets in their tens of thousands; boycotts took place in schools.3 It is estimated that around six million people across Turkey joined the protests, more than those who protested in the Gezi resistance.4

A significant development came on 23 March, when the CHP turned their primary election for İmamoğlu into a mass demonstration. The CHP opened solidarity ballots, allowing everyone to cast a vote for İmamoğlu, not only CHP members. While the party has 1.5 million members, 14.85 million votes were cast for İmamoğlu. According to the CHP, 2.2 million people attended the subsequent rally in Istanbul.

Over the past ten years, particularly in Kurdish provinces, elected mayors have been removed from office and arrested, with state officials appointed in their place. However, the mass movement of 19 March not only overcame state bans but also prevented the government from appointing a “trustee” mayor of Istanbul to replace the CHP’s leading politician, with hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the municipal building every evening. Despite the arrest of İmamoğlu, these first ten days of protests signified a defeat for the government. Millions of people taking their destiny into their own hands and preventing the appointment of an AKP member to the metropolitan municipality has certainly made Erdoğan anxious about the sharp class struggle that we expect in the coming months.

ISJ: The trigger for the protests was the arrest of Erdoğan’s rival: Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. However, from what you have said, it seems there were much broader issues behind the public’s anger.
Şenol: The main factor behind the protests is the country’s economic crisis, which has been passing through different phases since 2018—with the depreciation of the Turkish lira, high inflation and a high current account deficit, accompanied by a rapid decline in the Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves. In January 2018, £1 was equal to 5 Turkish lira, but by August 2025, £1 had risen to 55 Turkish lira. The wave of inflation triggered a tremendous rise in the cost of living. The purchasing power of large sections of the population declined, and the proportion of housing and food expenses in total expenditure increased. Youth unemployment and the number of students forced to work while attending university rose. The migration of educated young people to Europe accelerated. Approximately half of workers in Turkey receive a minimum wage of just 22,000 lira (£396) per month.

In addition to economic hardship, the outburst of anger was fuelled by widespread opposition to corruption, bribery, nepotism, the judiciary becoming a direct instrument of power, unjust arrests and political prisoners being held in jail for months or years without an indictment. Decisions made by higher courts or the European Court of Human Rights, such as those concerning Selahattin Demirtaş, a leader of the Kurdish political movement, have not been implemented by the government.5

Issues such as the government demonising LGBT+ people, declaring war on the working class, with record levels of workplace deaths, the failure to take deterrent measures against femicides and the fact that the perpetrators sometimes walk freely among us, repeatedly fuel and maintain the anger.6 The law passed to slaughter tens of thousands of street dogs infuriated animal rights activists. And the government’s repeated bans on strikes provoked a reaction from the organised working class.7

The actions of millions who saw the destruction of democracy and the possibility of the right to vote being abolished in the face of the arrest of İmamoğlu were very important. It is crucial for socialists to warn against the boomerang effect of remaining silent about the oppression of Kurds, or even occasionally becoming part of this mechanism of oppression.8

ISJ: As you say, the CHP leadership supported the protests, but this seemed to be a factor that limited the more radical demands of the protests. Can you tell us more about the CHP’s policy?
Şenol: The arrest of İmamoğlu showed the CHP leadership that they were facing an existential threat. The militant mood on the streets shaped the CHP leader Özgür Özel’s sharpness and determination in his rally speeches. He demonstrated leadership beyond expectations. The reality, that there was no room for diplomatic bargaining in the face of pressure from below and judicial attacks, pulled the CHP leadership to the left. The scale of the protests pointed to a movement that far exceeded the CHP.

However, the CHP leadership made three missteps in its response to this larger movement. First, it began making efforts to limit the movement to supporters of the CHP. Second, it tied the struggle to its electoral goals and launched a signature campaign demanding early elections, aiming to reach 30 million signatures, a goal that has not yet been achieved. Indeed, by announcing that CHP rallies would be held in a different province every week and in a different district of Istanbul every Wednesday, the CHP steered the masses—who had been protesting against the Erdoğan administration’s repressive policies and demanding freedom with a wide range of demands—towards a focus on the early election demand, one that would result in votes for the CHP. Third, the CHP, a Kemalist and nationalist party, attempted to include far-right and fascist groups in the protests. Turkish flags were distributed to participants, and a letter written from prison by Ümit Özdağ, the racist leader of the Victory Party (Zafer Partisi, ZP), was read out to the crowds in front of the town hall.9

As the protests increasingly turned into routine CHP rallies, millions of people who had joined the movement between 19 and 29 March, with the idea of “unity in diversity” and a sense that they could win as part of this movement, withdrew.

We must understand that the CHP is not waging a leftist struggle but is compelled to pursue a policy of mass mobilisation. Class struggle in Turkey is also putting pressure on the CHP. The extreme right-wing and repressive conditions of the state of emergency regime are pushing the CHP, the party of a section of the ruling class, into the struggle. However, the ruling party’s fear of losing the elections to the CHP has now made the opposition party the main target. The realisation that the ruling bloc cannot solve the issue of poverty is driving millions to seek an alternative, with the poor in the AKP’s support base beginning to break away from the party. The course of the class struggle is pushing the CHP, at least in terms of a section of its leadership, to seek new ways to connect with the poor and with workers. However, the party has been unable to overcome the habits it has developed over the last 20 years of mobilising the masses around Kemalist and nationalist ideas.10

ISJ: It would be helpful to know more about the erosion of the core of Erdoğan’s social base. When the AKP first came to power, it was seen as a moderate Islamist party, appealing not only to religious poor but also to other social bases, such as capitalist groups previously marginalised by the secular powers dominating the state. How has the AKP’s support base changed since it came to power?
Şenol: Compared to 2018, the AKP lost votes in 75 province in the 2023 general elections, notably suffering heavy losses in the AKP strongholds in Central Anatolia.11 For the first time, they fell below the results of the 2002 elections, the first held after the official foundation of the AKP.12 While the AKP continues to receive votes in poor neighbourhoods, the votes it receives in such areas, particularly in Istanbul, are also declining. The losses experienced by the AKP over ten months are revealing. The party won 24 districts in Istanbul in the 2023 elections, compared to 15 for the CHP. Yet, by the 31 March 2024 municipal elections, the tables had turned, with the CHP winning in 26 districts, compared to 13 for the AKP. It is clear that there has been a shift away from the AKP in all of Istanbul’s poor districts.

Behind this change lies the following metamorphosis. The AKP, seen by the traditional state structure as a threat to the secular state, generated consent by at least listening to the social segments resisting the repressive nature of this state structure, while primarily defending the economic policies of the bourgeoisie. During its growing authoritarianism, the AKP has become intertwined with the traditional structure of the state, transforming the party. It also gained the support of the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), defender of all kinds of right-wing government policies, becoming increasingly dependent on this support.13 Over time, the party regressed towards the most right-wing, archaic and corrupt ideas within its own base.

Especially since 2015, the AKP—which as you mentioned was a moderate Islamist party that drew votes from “pious poor”—has gradually built the authoritarian regime we now face. Two critical developments should be highlighted. First, after the previous peace process, the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) won 13 percent of the vote and became the third party in parliament, and this, combined with the strengthening of the Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria, became a matter of life and death for the established order.14 Erdoğan, having lost his chance to rule alone in the 2015 elections, framed the issue precisely in these terms. The second critical development was the AKP’s alliance with the MHP, which had vehemently opposed the peace process from the beginning.

Second, we have to have a clear understanding of the history of the AKP. The AKP leadership initially gained popularity, in particular, among the religious urban poor and small-scale capitalist groups. The history of the AKP encompasses a process in which women, the urban poor and various sections of the working class united around this party, and experienced political crises, coup attempts and social struggles. In other words, while avoiding pressure from the military and the bureaucracy, the AKP leadership adopted a position that appealed to sections of the working class and the poor. However, the mainstream left, and even significant sections of the radical left, opposed the AKP on the grounds that it was hostile to secularism. This effectively concealed the more fundamental limitations of Erdoğan and his party. One of these limitations was that the party devoted its entire existence to currying favour with the ruling class and proving that it was best placed to defend their interests, and so trying to convince the masses, who fundamentally were in irreconcilable opposition to its policies. This was the case in its early years, when it was at odds with the Turkish state, and it remains so today.

Another limitation of the AKP was the right-wing nature of its leadership. Today, the AKP is a main component of an extreme right-wing coalition. The following examples illustrate how this party and Erdoğan have changed. At one time, the AKP was threatened with closure by the Constitutional Court; yet, later, it argued that the Kurdish party, the HDP, should be closed down. While advocating for LGBT+ rights, AKP leaders organised anti-LGBT+ hate marches. They once spoke of membership in the European Union (EU) and worked with liberal democrats but later entered into an alliance with the far-right MHP. They previously used rhetoric against coups but, after the 15 July coup attempt, signed off on coup-era practices, with the declaration of a state of emergency.15 It signed the Istanbul Convention, an agreement on women’s rights and then withdrew from it. It previously allowed commemorations of the Armenian Genocide but later banned them.16

It is clear there are two very different parties here. Therefore, it is inevitable that there will be a change in the structure of the support base for the party at various stages. Nevertheless, the reason that the AKP has not shrivelled and disappeared entirely is that it uses all the resources of the state administration and has tremendous propaganda opportunities, combined with the fact that an alternative has not yet taken shape. Behind Erdoğan’s anger towards İmamoğlu lies the fact that the president sees the CHP as a potential alternative for the masses who have lost hope in the AKP.

ISJ: The late Roni Margulies, a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (Devrimci Sosyalist İşçi Partisi, DSİP) and a good friend of International Socialism, argued in this journal that a large part of the Turkish left emerged from a mixture of Stalinism and Kemalism. He said that because the social base of Kemalism was those who ran the state and the middle-class elements who wanted to join them, the distinction between nationalism and anti-imperialism became blurred. And secularism, or more specifically hostility towards political forces linked to Islam, was often used by the military to mobilise the people against governments they disliked. Are these ideas still valid in the left?
Şenol: Thank you for acknowledging Roni. Kemalism, the founding ideology of the Republic, and especially the policies of the single-party regime period, are seen as an achievement by various sections of the left. Kemalism is equated with secularism and anti-imperialism. Stalinism, which, on the one hand, legitimises nationalism and, on the other, reduces socialism to state ownership, made it easier for the left in Turkey to see benefits in Kemalism for the oppressed and the working class. Especially during the AKP years, with Islamophobia extending to opposition to Islamist parties, there were even those who, while defining themselves as leftists, thought that military intervention against the so-called “Sharia-oriented AKP” was acceptable. However, the 15 July 2016 coup attempt shattered all preconceptions. The realisation that a number of critical positions within the army had been infiltrated by Gülenist coup plotters, and the fact that the coup was repelled with the contribution of the masses destroyed this image of the army.17

After the 15 July coup attempt, the centre of politics shifted to the far right. In 2023, after the AKP had formed a coalition with the MHP and the government began avoiding any criticism of Kemalism, Roni wrote the following:

While rabid Kemalist nationalism and the nationalism of the religious have always displayed significant commonalities, it is also clear that the conflict between the two wings has left its mark on Turkey’s history over the past 30 years. But in my opinion, the real benefit of the term “secular nationalism” is not so much that it points out that there are two types of nationalism, but that it emphasises that both wings are nationalist.18

Although the AKP’s coalition with the fascist MHP since 2016 has confused secular nationalists, Kemalism is visible in many parts of the political spectrum. Various sections of the left share messages praising Mustafa Kemal’s anti-imperialist struggle on national holidays and commemorate the socialists executed during the single-party period. Yet, today there is no longer any mention of a left calling on the army to take action. The reason for this is not that coups are seen as a bad thing but rather the view that this army is no longer “that” army. The debate among left-wing nationalists mainly takes the form of organising nationalist political campaigns to protect the gains of the republic.

The Turkish Communist Party (Türkiye Komünist Partisi, TKP), which is both Stalinist and Kemalist, staged actions in recent months defending the republic by kneeling before statues of Mustafa Kemal. The Left Party, the successor to the Freedom and Solidarity Party (Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi, ÖDP), is now much closer to TKP’s politics. However, in our view, and as Roni also frequently emphasised:

Kemalism is the ideology of the process of creating a new bourgeois state during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic. This is its sole and fundamental meaning and function. This ideology theorised all that the local and Muslim commercial bourgeoisie deemed necessary to establish and consolidate itself as the ruling class; it created a nation where there was no national consciousness, national borders where there were no borders, and a local market. Meanwhile, given that there were foreign occupying forces in the country and that a nation-state could not be created where they were present, it also adopted a language reminiscent of anti-imperialism.19  

Unfortunately, we must mention that a significant proportion of the left adopts this same language.

ISJ: We have seen brutal violence against the protests—the arrests of activists, politicians and trade unionists continue. Does Erdoğan have a strategy to resolve the internal crisis beyond repression?
Şenol: The government has no room left to resolve the crisis other than through repressive policies. The alternative to repression is democracy. Either the boundaries of political democracy will expand or the degree of repressive policies will increase. For Erdoğan, democracy is currently the most unnecessary phenomenon. Democracy, meaning the expansion of protest, organisation and freedom of thought, is a threat to the ruling bloc. Ending repressive policies and taking a series of democratic steps would boost the confidence of the angry crowds who took to the streets a few months ago. Under conditions of extreme repression, crowds who take to the streets despite state bans, who occupy squares and clash with police, undeterred by arrests and detentions, could take to the streets with even greater determination if the scope for freedom of organisation were to expand.

The AKP government recently banned public sector workers from striking. Nevertheless, a partial wildcat strike took place on 17 July. Moreover, even unions known for their pro-government bureaucrats were forced to join the strike. The government continues to take from the poor and give to the rich, and poverty is deepening. Anger among workers, the poor and the unemployed is almost palpable. On the other hand, the students who took to the streets for İmamoğlu but faced a wave of arrests, are clearly waiting for schools to open, and when they do, we may well witness mass and militant actions.

Although Erdoğan does not want to make any concessions on his policy of repression, there is an insistent demand for democracy from millions of people, and a series of democratic moves—the logical continuation of the new peace process on the Kurdish issue—are on the agenda. The fact that the peace process must go hand in hand with democratic openings is disturbing to the government. Therefore, while the process advances, authoritarian moves and arrests continue. Currently, the hopeful atmosphere of the peace process is advancing alongside the right-wing atmosphere of authoritarian moves, leaving the AKP facing a dilemma. Its policies of repression could trigger a more mass and militant response against it, but lifting the repression could also pave the way for a similar movement. Under these conditions, the AKP may try to reduce the peace process to disarmament, postpone democratic reforms as much as possible, and in the meantime, try to win back lost votes by playing the “party that ended terrorism” card.

ISJ: The MHP, which you describe as a fascist party, is part of Erdoğan’s ruling coalition. There is also a group in parliament that split from the MHP and is now in opposition. Does fascism pose a serious threat in Turkey today?
Senol: The MHP—the largest fascist force in Turkey—organised on an anti-Communist basis in the 1970s. In the 1990s, the MHP reorganised itself, this time on the basis of hostility towards the Kurds. Until the coup attempt in 2016, the party acted together with the CHP against the AKP, but, after 2016, it formed an alliance with the AKP, throwing the doors of state bureaucracy wide open to the MHP. MHP members regained important positions in the army, the police and the upper echelons of state bureaucracy. During this process, the style of Turkish nationalism advocated by the MHP spread, particularly among the AKP base, and fascist ideas and symbols became increasingly mainstream. Although the MHP is the largest party on the Turkish far right, there are other parties in this sphere such as the more Islamist Great Unity Party (Büyük Birlik Partisi, BBP) and the Good Party (İYİ Parti, İYİP), founded by those who split from the MHP in response to its alliance with the AKP.

These parties constitute the more traditional parties of Turkey’s far-right politics. The ZP, led by former deputy leader of the MHP, Ümit Özdağ, has taken on a rather new direction. The Victory Party bases its entire politics on opposition to Syrian refugees, accompanied, of course, by ideas such as hostility towards Kurds. Özdağ has promised to send refugees out of Turkey “by force if necessary”, and party officials have spread lies targeting refugees. Supporters of the party, which also joined the protests of 19 March, closely follow and refer to the international Alt-Right. Refugees are described as “invaders”, and the goal is to turn Turkey into an “Anatolian Fortress”. From the paranoia that Arabs will replace the Turkish population, to the lie that refugees are the cause of the economic crisis, to the rhetoric of “fighting against abusive immigrants”, the ZP uses the same arguments as the far right in Europe and the US. We must be vigilant on this issue and build a mass anti-racist movement.

ISJ: Now let’s return to the extremely important question of the Kurdish struggle. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK), an armed group that has been fighting for decades for a homeland for the Kurdish minority, agreed to disband in February, following a call from its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. In July, there were striking images of former PKK militants burning their weapons in cauldrons. What is the reason for this sudden change in the PKK? And how did Kurds and others react to this situation?
Şenol: Although the transition to the disarmament phase took place at a speed that surprised everyone, Abdullah Öcalan’s views are not new. On 28 February 2015, the Dolmabahçe Agreement was shared with the public in a meeting held at the prime minister’s office and attended by state officials, AKP representatives and spokespersons for the Kurdish party, who were involved in the peace talks at which Öcalan’s call to the PKK to convene a disarmament congress within the following months was read out. Subsequent developments ended with Erdoğan announcing that the peace process had been shelved, and a period of intense repression began. The call for laying down arms in the new peace process demonstrates Öcalan’s determination to continue from where he left off.

Öcalan presented two fundamental perspectives, one based on a regional assessment and the other on the result of his ideological evolution. In his assessment of the world and the region, he emphasised that the gains made by the Kurds, particularly in Syria, were in danger. First of all, the fact that the US would not be able to take on a protective role, as it did in the fight against Islamic State with the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD), clearly set off alarm bells for Öcalan.20 He also observed that Israel was seeking to draw the Kurds into an alliance. If the Kurdish-Israeli reproachment turned into cooperation, this could lead to a harsh response from people across the region towards the Kurds. Indeed, Erdoğan has opportunistically accused the Kurds of siding with Israel. Faced with the possibility of the Kurds playing a role in Israel becoming the most influential hegemonic power in the region, he anticipated the need to enter a new phase in the Kurdish freedom struggle, with political arrangements recognising the democratic rights of the Kurds, determined by different conditions in both Syria and Turkey. He underscored that the first step must be the laying down of arms.

The Kurdish people are approaching developments with cautious optimism. There is a legitimate trust issue, as the Kurds were subjected to heavy repression after the first peace process. However, the idea that “Öcalan founded the PKK, so Öcalan can dissolve it” is also quite widespread among the Kurds. For the Kurds to feel great enthusiasm about developments, they need to see concrete evidence that they have gained their most fundamental rights. Within the Kurdish left beyond the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (Partiya Wekhevî û Demokrasiya Gelan, DEM Party) and the PKK, we can also say that there is no force expressing the view that Öcalan has reconciled with the state.21 There are noticeable tendencies among Kurdish intellectuals living abroad to disparage the process, but they do not have the power to determine the political debate. Öcalan’s decision to send a message directly to the PKK Congress, either live or via video recording, seems to have accelerated the decision-making process.

The new peace process has generally been met with scepticism by the wider Turkish left. Of course, the fact that the government simultaneously launched an authoritarian crackdown on the main opposition party contributed to the left’s scepticism towards the new process. However, this has gone as far as producing arguments such as “the AKP is deceiving the Kurds”, “the Kurds are selling out the struggle for democracy in Turkey” and “the DEM Party is in alliance with the AKP”. Behind these views lies a social chauvinist understanding that underestimates the political level of the Kurdish people, while viewing the AKP as omnipotent. This understanding disregards the idea of “critical but unconditional support”, embodied in the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, viewing the Kurdish people and the Kurdish movement as a force that can be controlled or dictated to. DSİP, by contrast, argues that the struggles for peace and democracy must be pursued simultaneously. There are just two left-wing parties that have supported the peace process from the outset. One is the DEM Party; the other is DSİP.

ISJ: How is the general pattern of conflict between imperialisms in the region linked to the PKK laying down its arms? Erdoğan seems to strongly support the new regime in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Levant Liberation Committee, HTS), which is hostile towards the Kurds. With the Kurds’ presence in northeastern Syria, is the peace agreement a way to balance the Turkish government’s support for HTS with its broader goals in the region?
Şenol: The most interesting aspect of the new peace process is the MHP’s insistence on striving for its success. Behind this insistence lies the MHP leader’s perception of Israel as a threat. Israel has become a cause for concern for all powers in the region with its assassinations, massacres, heavy attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and simultaneous wars with Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen, as well as its occupation of Gaza. Deepening the genocide in Gaza with new wars or conflicts will make the region even more unstable. The overthrow of the Assad regime opened the door to a critical new era for Turkey. The fundamental problem for the Turkish state, as expressed by MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, was the expansion of Kurdish autonomy in Syria to the detriment of Turkey under these chaotic political and military conditions. To mitigate the impact of the developing war, changes in the balance of power, genocide and destruction in the Middle East, Turkey must foster a moderate climate regarding the Kurdish issue and, if possible, strengthen itself beyond its borders to seize new opportunities following these internal adjustments. This has been the state’s focus since October 2024.

No one expected the MHP to play such a critical role in the new peace process. It was difficult to comprehend that a party that had mobilised fascists, nationalists and racists against the peace process in 2013-15 was now at the centre of the new peace process. As revolutionary socialists in Turkey, we explained this issue as follows. The fascist party will defend the interests of the existing state to the bitter end, until a fascist transformation takes place. The fascist party protects the state by building the harshest wave of violence until the bourgeoisie has no other choice but to crush the organised proletariat and resort to terror to protect its threatened profits. This is also a process of currying favour with the bigwigs of the existing state, of proving themselves to them. While protecting the interests of the ruling class behind the mask of the state’s interests, they try to explain and demonstrate that a fascist state organisation would truly protect these “national interests”. Bahçeli and the MHP now embrace the state’s perception while also contributing to shaping that perception. At the same time, they act as the guarantor, from the perspective of the state and all ultra-right elements, that the dialogue process with the Kurds will not progress beyond the first stage of the process. Hence, all the state bureaucrats first affirm Bahçeli’s views and then draw the same boundaries.

The fact that such a party, which only yesterday prepared legal files to close down a Kurdish party, has begun to praise it and to recognise Öcalan, whom it has dubbed a “terrorist leader”, as the founder of the PKK, can only be possible because the state feels a deep concern for survival in its very bones. The state has clearly been debating this for some time­—at least since November-December 2023, when it became clear that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza—in order to prevent the terror instigated by Israel and developments in Syria from making the Kurdish issue in Turkey impossible to resolve. Consequently, as Öcalan was heading in one direction, the state was heading in another, but at a certain point, the opportunity to build a new foundation where the Kurdish people could obtain their fundamental rights intersected with the policy change created by the state’s existential anxiety.

With the HTS offensive and the overthrow of the Assad regime, it became apparent that the new peace process could be transformed into another opportunity for the ruling class and the state in Turkey. The state, which coded these developments as a matter of existence and expressed its reaction radically from this perspective, naturally considered that it could evaluate them not only from a defensive angle but also in terms of becoming a regional power, which seemed even more feasible for Erdoğan following the fall of Assad and the strong relations established with the HTS government.

The most important issue in the new peace process is whether the Kurds can reach an agreement with HTS on both military matters within Syria and the political structure that will evolve from the self-government of the Kurds.

ISJ: Major street protests were taking place where the PKK made its announcement. How did this affect the relationship between the street protesters and the Kurdish movement? Erdoğan will probably see opportunities to try to divide the opposition to his own rule.
Şenol: The way things stand, factors that could enable the AKP to achieve such a goal coexist with factors that could prevent it, but the latter outweigh the former. Firstly, there was never an open alliance between the CHP and the HDP (which was the forerunner to the DEM Party), as they had already agreed on their principles. The HDP did not field candidates in the 2023 presidential elections or for some mayoral positions in the West in the 2024 local elections. Again, in the municipal elections, some individuals close to the HDP entered municipal councils on CHP lists. This ambiguous alliance became known as “Urban Reconciliation” and was used by the AKP to launch a terrorism investigation against İmamoğlu. Meanwhile, the CHP, which had long avoided openly aligning itself with the HDP, had formed such an open alliance with right-wing parties called the “Table of Six”.

During the 19 March protests, the CHP tried to build the broadest possible unity around itself. Here, it was clear that there was a difference between the CHP leadership and the CHP grassroots and the more nationalist crowd participating in the protests. The CHP continued the protests with Turkish flags and the slogan “We Are the Soldiers of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)!”, but it also tried not to alienate the Kurds. Some of the participants in the protests tried to pressure Özgür Özel to take a more nationalist line by targeting the Kurds and the DEM Party. Some mayors within the CHP also supported this. We can say that, in general, Özel did not bow to this pressure; from the podium, he repeatedly mentioned Demirtaş, the former co-spokesperson of the HDP and a much-loved political figure among the Kurds in particular, who has now been in prison for almost nine years, and said that “Kurdish democrats” were on his side. Spokespersons for the Kurdish movement declared their solidarity with the CHP members facing government repression.

It was also significant that the CHP did not openly oppose the new peace process. The ruling party’s operation to divide the opposition hit another wall. The CHP’s participation in the peace process coalition formed in parliament was very important. The CHP thus challenged the ruling bloc more clearly and conveyed the message to both the Kurds and the state that, as a candidate for power in the coming term, it would champion the peace process. As long as the CHP supports the peace process to the end, it is unlikely that the opposition will be divided.

ISJ: Erdoğan reiterated his call for the EU to restart the membership negotiations that were suspended in July, but this does not seem very likely at present. Meanwhile, he seems to have a quite close relationship with Donald Trump. How are Turkey’s relations with the larger imperialist powers developing?
Şenol: As a regional power, and in line with the interests of Turkish capital, Turkey is attempting to intervene in several surrounding countries, from Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, and from Syria to Somalia. This is accompanied by an increase in armament. Turkey has produced an aircraft carrier capable of launching combat drones, and the country’s arms exports are expected to exceed $8 billion (£5.9 billion) by 2025. This makes Turkey the 11th biggest exporter of arms worldwide.

Turkey also began to take a more interventionist stance in Africa. The Turkish Armed Forces were training the Somali army, and Turkish companies began operating the port of Mogadishu. In 2017, Turkey opened a military base in Somalia. In 2024, an agreement was signed for Turkey to protect Somali territorial waters. As for the Middle East, Turkey has intervened in Syria from the outset and has attempted to create proxy forces there. The Turkish state perceives Syria as its backyard, while Turkish capital views Syria as a source of cheap labour and an investment opportunity. Most recently, the contract for the renovation of Damascus airport was awarded to Turkish companies.

However, Turkey’s dreams of becoming a regional power are not always compatible with the plans of other regional or major imperialist powers. We previously witnessed a crisis with the US over Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Russia, and the US continues to oppose Turkey’s access to F-35 fighter jets. While Turkey’s first nuclear power plant is being built by a Russian company, Turkey is at the same time facing off against Russia in Libya and Syria. After the Turkish air force shot down a Russian aircraft in 2020, Russia carried out an air strike in Idlib, killing 36 soldiers.

Turkey is trying to emerge as a regional power by playing the major imperialist powers off against each other. However, this is a policy that will bring nothing but blood and tears to the working classes living in Turkey. Within the country, the AKP constantly promotes the idea that Turkey is a great power. At the same time, it is trying to open up wider areas to Turkish capital. Exposing the aims of Turkey’s ventures into becoming a regional power is one DSİP’s most important tasks.

ISJ: Given the crisis and the complex regional situation that Erdoğan is trying to manage, what do revolutionary socialists such as DSİP stand for in Turkey today? And what are your expectations for the future?
Şenol: We have been fighting non-stop against the genocide in Gaza for two years. Being part of the global intifada for Gaza means exposing the great rift between the government’s rhetorical support for the Palestinians and its actions on Gaza. What was needed from the opposition was to expose Turkey’s bilateral relations with Israel, yet the fact that Hamas led the Palestinian resistance prevented the Islamophobic opposition from taking action for Gaza. However, one of the reasons why a segment of AKP voters turned their backs on the party in the 31 March elections was the realisation that the AKP’s tears for Gaza were fake.

Then, we are fighting both to repel the wave of authoritarianism that the government has intensified against the CHP in recent months and for the success of the new peace process that has come into play on the Kurdish issue. As long as the Kurds remain alone at the negotiating table with the state, it will be difficult for them to emerge from the process with lasting gains. We are striving to build a mass peace movement in the West so that the Kurdish question can be resolved in the context of the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination and so that the Kurds can emerge from this dynamic and chaotic process with lasting gains. Ensuring that the working class takes ownership of the peace process will also mean shaping an alliance between the Kurdish people and the working class in the struggle.

The emphasis on peace must be accompanied by an emphasis on the struggle against authoritarianism. The foremost reason for the lack of trust in the peace process is the question of how an authoritarian government that arrests elected mayors can play a role in resolving the Kurdish issue. A peace process that would yield political and legal gains for the Kurdish people could lead to both a decline in Turkish nationalism and a deepening of the ruling power’s crisis. The first election in which the AKP lost its status as the sole ruling party was the 7 June 2015 election, which followed the peace process that began in 2013. While explaining to those who view the process with suspicion that every gain achieved by the Kurds in the process will be in favour of democracy, the struggle against authoritarian aggression will also ensure that CHP voters, who have been distant from the Kurdish issue, take a stance in favour of the Kurds. An axis in which the most fundamental rights of the Kurdish people are recognised would mean reconfiguring the Republic as we know it. Ideologically, this would have a definite liberating effect, particularly for the working class, which the ruling class tries to bind to itself through nationalist ties. We can argue that when the wave of authoritarianism is curbed by resistance from below, the crisis of the ruling bloc will deepen. When it becomes clear that İmamoğlu and the CHP mayors were arrested as a result of a political conspiracy against them, all these authoritarian moves will backfire on the ruling bloc.

At the forefront of our expectations for the future is to succeed in becoming the sharp edge of the anger building up against the ruling bloc. To this end, in the coming period, we need an alternative that overcomes the CHP’s narrow-mindedness, nationalism and tendency to make concessions to its own right wing and the political right more generally. If early elections come onto the agenda, we will do everything we can to carry the voice of the streets to the electoral arena. The ruling power does not want to face the struggle of angry masses in the streets and see this struggle coincide with a united demand for early elections. But the economic crisis, which is difficult to resolve, combined with growing talk of strikes among the working class, means that alarm bells are ringing. Preventing the far right from mobilising the social anger makes building a mass revolutionary alternative a necessity.

Şenol Karakaş has been a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (Devrimci Sosyalist İşçi Partisi), part of the International Socialist Tendency in Turkey, since the early 1990s.

Notes